


Pandora's Box

by sungchanery



Category: LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon), NCT (Band)
Genre: ....or not, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst and Tragedy, Episode: s01e07 Beyond the Aquila Rift, Inspired by..., M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Science Fiction, Space Stations, it feels good until it doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:36:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28844694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungchanery/pseuds/sungchanery
Summary: It wouldn’t take long this time, Kun thought.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	Pandora's Box

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello 
> 
> this is inspired by the lovely second episode of the series love death + robots which is honestly SO damn good, its animation knocked the shit out of me and the stories are golden, one after another just having me go :o, so i had to write something inspired by one of them . 
> 
> a big thank u to [mari](https://twitter.com/kuns_dimples) for betaing this bad boy and to [lua](https://twitter.com/pinkhrj) and [ash](https://twitter.com/mullethyuck) for reading over this and hyping me up! u know how much i love y'all hehehe 
> 
> anyway, mind the tags and i really hope u enjoy this eerie piece of scifi tragedy!

The engines buzz to life with every single tap on the screen, Neo stabilizing their course for them in the blink of an eye. 

“How long’s gonna take, Cap’n?” Yukhei shouts from the back of the ship, one leg precariously in his pod, his fingers hovering above its keypad, waiting for orders. 

It wouldn’t take long this time, Kun thought. Earth always looks the farthest to them, homesickness making them impatient although the planet they just took off from was the last in their list and that’s always the one closest to home. They have been away for too long, Kun knows; and that’s the reason why he doesn’t even look at the estimated time of arrival Neo provides him with. He has the numbers memorized in the back of his brain along with everything else he misses and will soon find again. 

“Five thousand and thirty-eight light years, make sure you punch that in,” Kun warns and Yukhei flashes him a thumbs up, giving the system the data before completely slipping inside his pod to lie down on the uncomfortable, worn down cushions and securing the pod sealed.

Kun will never get tired of observing the way their Neo system keeps them alive from the portal-jump impact — translucent, viscous liquid starts pouring in Yukhei’s pod, submerging his seemingly relaxed body in its protective liquid shackles, inch by inch until Yukhei gets swallowed whole. He can see, hear and feel nothing; Kun can recall from his own experience, and soon, after setting Neo into auto-pilot, he lets himself slip into the pod as well until his ears get stuffed with resin, keeping every distraction out, Kun zeroing in the single thought that in twenty one minutes, he will reach _home._

The air that hits his face burns and feels heavy. 

He peels his eyes open, abruptly shaken out of his slumber and when his hand blindly reaches out to the single button that would in any other case set him free, it meets sharp glass. 

Blood runs down Kun’s fingers but he pays it no mind — it’s hard to focus on anything else other than the chaos in front of his eyes. 

There are shards of glass, sparks of flaring electricity running out of the shattered control panel, the hologram of their AI system fluttering in and out of existence, stripped off of the stable connection it always seemed to maintain. Kun has poured his life and soul into his ship — endless hours spent making sure everything ran smoothly, every cable, every capsule, every metallic part in place like the most intricate puzzle in the cosmos being solved, framed and admired by many. There is nothing to admire now and Kun feels like his life’s work is slipping right off the cracks of his palms, like the liquid that would keep him safe is pouring out of his pod under his legs. 

“Y-Yukhei?” Is the first thing Kun says, turning his head so fast his neck complains with an audible _crack_ — but his words fall on deaf ears. Yukhei is still knocked out, shards of glass having sliced thin scratches on his once spotless face and his pod is in the same state as Kun’s, as his entire ship is. Rocking him does nothing; but with two fingers against Yukhei’s pulse point, Kun lets out the relieved breath trapped apprehensively in his lungs. Yukhei’s alive. If his friend is alive, then their dream is too. 

He only manages to take another step away from the pods before the spaceship’s door slides open with a loud thump, Kun’s eyes turning into slits in an attempt to make sense out of the figures hidden in a mist of smoke, gaudily stepping on the rubble, clad in white protective gear that Kun tries to search in his brain for but draws a blank. 

Their helmets snap open, and Kun’s breath hitches against his throat. 

“Ten? Ten is...is that—”

The man nods, a knowing smile settling on his beautiful, unchanged features. This time Kun’s brain pulls a thousand images out of its crevices; and where it had filled his body with dread, it replaces it with longing. 

“It’s been a while, Kun.” 

Ten looks good in white. He has always looked good, and he still does in every memory of Kun’s that flashes on the backs of his eyes in a single second — but right now, after all those years, Ten looks _good._ With the smoke engulfing him he almost looks otherworldly; and this says a lot, given that Kun has dedicated his life to venturing into the uncharted cosmos. 

“How...where are we? Our route…”

“There has been a routing error,” Ten explains and his voice gets tinted with distress, “and every routing error happening in The Punch sends you here. You’re safe here, Kun.” 

Before Kun can process Ten’s words, Yukhei stirs out of his stupor, turning heads. He looks as worn out as his surroundings and the furrow between his bushy eyebrows is deeper than any other time Kun has seen him upset and confused. 

“Cap’n...what—what the— _”_

Kun mirrors the furrow, his heart falling from behind his ribcage for the second time after their crash but now through Yukhei’s point of view as he takes in the wreckage himself with saucer-like eyes. He looks angry, almost; and Kun feels it bubble inside him too. A glance at Ten, and the beast settles; for now. 

“A routing error,” Ten repeats and he sounds apologetic, as if it’s his fault that their ship landed probably thousands of light years away from their destination. “You’re now in the 0 Mile Station. Probably...well, _surely_ nowhere as planned, but nothing a weekly break and our mechanic can’t fix.” 

Yukhei’s frown deepens even when Kun knows that he doesn’t want it to, courage always his infallible front, and he lifts the hem of his shirt to his face to hide it and compensate, wincing when he unmindfully wipes harshly on the small scars on his skin. He turns to look at Kun and when he nods at him his shoulders visibly release all their tension. It’s a blessing — the blind trust Yukhei puts on him. It would feel a tad better if Kun knew what to do; if Kun had anything else in his mind except for _Ten, Ten, Ten_ right now. 

“Lemme accompany you to the headquarters and we can work through your precious schedule when y’all have some food in your system, how about that?” 

Yukhei pouts when Ten mentions the word “system”, his fingers twitching as if craving to touch and his eyes following the constant blinking of their fallen AI, Kun smiling with how Yukhei treats Neo like a hurt friend. _Soon,_ he internally reassures himself, a silent promise to his spaceship and to Yukhei as well. _Soon, we’ll all reach home._

Kun ends up being the only one escorted back to 0 Mile, as Yukhei’s staggering legs are enough of a clue that his body needs to stabilize after the shock of the course mishap and the malfunction of their pods, so he excuses himself to lie back in it until he finds it in himself to get rid off his daze. He misses out because as it turns out, everything on 0 Mile is unlike any other station Kun has ever landed during his long trip — there’s a tranquility uncharacteristic to space stations, one that doesn’t shake him off but placates him instead, coating him with a security blanket he has never felt before out of Earth grounds. Then again, he is walking behind Ten; and Ten is the closest thing to home he knows. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Ten smiles at him hours later, the cosmic light coming from the floor-to-ceiling, thick windows of the lounge casting a blue hue on the side of his face, accentuating his features in a way that sends Kun’s mind spiralling more than the cold on the rocks whisky beneath his fingers. He settles incredibly close, the side of his thighs brushing on the harsh leather of Kun’s pants — but it’s still not enough. They’ve been closer, Kun’s brain unhelpfully provides, kicking Kun off his mental orbit once more before he snaps out of it to give the man an answer. 

“It is,” he takes a sip from his drink, stalling, “if you don’t think about what happened to them all.” 

Ten chuckles, a sickeningly sweet sound before he steals Kun’s whisky out of his hands for a taste of his own. “That’s what space does to one, isn’t it? You get on the top of the world, just to get lost in it.” 

“Is this how you ended up here?” Kun lets himself ask what he has been wondering for years and Ten scoffs, moving an inch closer to him. 

“You say it as if it’s a bad thing. It’s not, Kun. I’ve found purpose here, even if I had to lose myself first.”

“That’s not the only thing you lost.” 

“But I found you too, didn’t I? You’re here. It took you a while, but you’re here.” 

Ten’s fingers on his thigh feel searingly hot, and the whisky he lets down his throat now seems ice-cold in comparison. He looks into Ten’s eyes, their talk causing him to go out on a search of his own, to lose himself in Ten’s irises and find what he once used to see in them. Back when he was still on solid, human ground, oblivious of the wonders of the universe because Ten’s eyes held their own and that was enough. It’s still there, still shimmering — and the Kun of today, a seasoned space traveller, has no other choice but to reach for the stars. 

“I didn’t think that I would ever— _fuck,_ feel like _this_ again,” Ten’s body rocks up against the cold, glass surface of the window, Kun’s nails digging in the plump flesh of his thighs as his cock hits deep, making Ten's insides clench and tingle with long forgotten pleasure emerging to life. Ten scratches streaks of red on Kun’s back and Kun’s lips suck purple constellations on his neck, both leaving marks on each other knowing that space is unforgiving, that the distance put between them once Kun steps out of 0 Mile will be beyond infinite. 

Kun can’t speak, not when every single nerve ending of his is focused on pushing inside Ten in a way that only he knows, fucking him until he sees the stars they are both lost in, the moment something akin to muscle memory. Ten moans, whines, calls his name in that lustful lilt that drives Kun mad and when he makes Ten come, his body limp against Kun’s toned arms, he’s sure that a piece of his mind, even if he will soon fly away, now belongs to 0 Mile. Belongs back to Ten.

Ten, along with his mind, steals the after-sex cigarette out of Kun's fingers before he tells him the truth. 

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he tries to reason, but Kun, spent, mindless Kun, feels the furious monster from earlier claw its way back out of the pit of his stomach. 

“Being in 0 Mile, light years away is one thing,” he lets out behind gritted teeth, fist clenching around the sheets, “but landing in Pandora’s Box? With my spaceship all shattered? Do you know how far away from home we are?” 

Ten doesn’t cower away when Kun’s voice grows in volume, anger threatening to spill out. He tries to reach out, soothe with a touch instead of his words, but Kun backs away and that seems to make the stars in Ten’s eyes lose their spark. 

“I have to go get Yukhei,” Kun, as a last resort, turns to the man he trusts the most.

It seems like consciousness has returned to Yukhei, bringing with it something that Kun has never seen before. It’s like the universe is fucking with him — hit after hit after hit, until Kun loses his footing, until he starts to float like all the remnants of the abandoned spaceships around them in open air, left with nowhere to go, with nobody close to help. 

“Cap’n— _Kun,_ Kun this isn’t Ten,” Yukhei’s voice is hoarse from disuse and his legs stammer once, twice, before they keep him upright unlike the first time he awoke. He grasps on this newfound stability to latch onto Ten, the glint that Kun knows really well, one that Yukhei’s eyes shine with whenever he has something he wants to protect, to keep safe and out of harm’s way appearing on his orbs as his fingers close into a fist that lands on nothing but air. “Get away! Kun step back!” 

Everything goes too fast for Kun’s rage-laced brain to process and Ten’s guards are quicker than any of his reactions, gripping on Yukhei’s arms with an armored, tight grip, a buzz of electricity echoing in the space among them before Yukhei’s body loses all its power and slumps lifelessly in the guards’ hold. Kun’s eyebrows reach up his hairline; and his anger finally oozes out of him in waves. 

“Let him _go.”_

“Kun, please—” 

“Let him fucking _go,_ Ten.” 

Before Kun’s has the time to move the guards let go of Yukhei with a snap of Ten’s fingers in a way that has his body sitting against the metallic walls of the ship, still knocked out from the electroshock. Kun spares him a glance just to ensure his safety and in the blink of an eye Ten’s back meets the other side of the ship with a loud bang, Kun’s fingers pressing on his shoulders with a grip meant to bruise. 

“What did he mean, Ten?” 

Kun searches on Ten’s face like he did before; but he doesn’t find what he wants. Instead of disbelief, on his features lies the same apologetic expression Ten shot him with earlier in the day when Kun still had hope. When the existence of something as deep in the rumor mill as Pandora's Box, was just that — a rumor. 

“You’re not ready for it.” 

“Tell me what Yukhei meant, Ten, or else—”

“Or else _what?!_ What will you do, Kun? We’re already stranded here, you can do nothing to me that will make this worse. They call this place an ageless graveyard, Kun. To everyone, I am already dead,” he spits out and it finally sounds like the truth should — bitter, real and painful. “You can’t harm the dead. _”_

It feels like fangs, the way Ten’s anger sinks into him — breaking skin and making him bleed. Blood is crimson, though, and as it runs down on him, it matches his red-hot, boiling fury like nothing else. 

“Tell me. If it’s like the rumors say, if this—if you’re feeding me _lies, illusions—_ I wanna know.” 

And it’s with an _“I prefer to show you, instead”_ and the empty, foreign darkness of Ten’s eyes that Kun jumps out of his illusion, falling back into the cruel reality. 

The air that hits his face burns and feels heavy.

Rotten.

His body is weak when he gets out of his pod, a familiar scene, and when he looks around, instead of damaged silver, he sees copper. Copper in the sky, on the metal of his one, true love that would never go rusty in his hands, copper on his crewmate’s skin, melted off his face and body in a way that only age can leave behind, an image straight out of a nightmare. His feet stick on the ground with a squelch — and it awfully feels like flesh, like the walls of a monster’s belly, the ones he and Yukhei fight on missions just for a few QUID to spend on dinner. It’s familiar like reality is, oftentimes. But as reality does, it gets twisted real quick. 

“Do you see it now?” 

A voice startles him and he turns, his neck complaining with an ear-splitting _crack_ that should be alarming. Then again, that’s what bones do — they crack with age. 

“It’s been a while, Kun,” the voice speaks again and from where Kun can hear it, an unspeakable sight appears in front of his eyes. 

To Kun, even when he thought that he knew the universe like the back of his palm, Ten looked otherworldly. But right now, with bubbling, scalded skin and with limbs morphed into something so monstrous it almost seems out of place in their surroundings’ own horror, Kun understands why the rumors call it the _Pandora’s Box._

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me [here](https://twitter.com/sungchanery) !!!


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